What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates • Hacker News Board

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#181

Post by dsk139 » Tue, May 15, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #163

dsk139 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: I'm an engineer & recruiter that works with over 100 tech companies in NYC. I also work on a SaaS platform for recruiters. After A/B testing tons of messages (and analyzing messages from a SaaS platform I built for recruiters to send messages) the messages that work are ones that are short. So I try to keep messages brief, reach out about a specific company that might be a match, and hope to get on the phone…

> the messages that work are ones that are short. I completely buy that. But in a short message there is still the choice between concrete information (tasks, location, level, tech/tools, salary, business sector, team size...). > hope to get on the phone with you to actually be able to do my actual job But that's the point: a phone call is a pretty big effort I think. I might do it if there is any clue that the job m…

> concrete information (tasks, location, level, tech/tools, salary, business sector, team size...).

If location isn't implied the only reason you wouldn't give it is bad recruiting practices in your case. Salary/Tasks/Team Size could be changing pretty rapidly for startups and an external recruiter might not have the up to to date info. Companies do a bad job at investing in their external recruiting process. FWIW, I always provide company name, location, tech/tools, a hook about why I like them, and if I can find it a hook about the candidate.

> But that's the point: a phone call is a pretty big effort I think.

Switching jobs is a pretty big effort overall. A lot of engineers who are willing to take the step of taking a call are generally thinking about leaving or actively looking. For strong recruiters the message is just the hook. If you're able to find a few trusted tech recruiters you can use throughout your career it makes the overall search a lot easier every time. It's like finding the all-star real estate agent when you're buying a home. There are a lot of bad recruiters so in your case, it's more likely you haven't found a strong recruiter to work with yet.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#182

Post by mmirate » Tue, May 15, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

hekfu wrote: post #174

ken wrote: post #78

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, product, technical challenges, or its work environment) is important. This frustrates me so much. What if I can't find a company that offers any such thing? This seems like anti-common sense to me. If you have skills at carpentry, and do a professional job, you can…

> If I didn't know any better, I'd say it sounds like you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you. I don't know why else it would matter. Ding ding ding. Also in this category * We still shitcorp want the company to be a family * Believing in our vision * Want our employees to be caring about the customer * Have fun and pizza in the office Unless a) there are hard cash…

> equity

AFAICT equity is a lottery-ticket at best, and is usually bubkes.

What novel information do you have about equity?

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#183

Post by jtmcmc » Tue, May 15, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #173

gervase wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own. Their first stop is probably a Google search: "example job description software engineering" Then, they replace the b…

> Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. I have the feeling many see this as malicious by employers. But it's already hard to find good developers, employing them as recruiters is a waste of resources. You'll try to find recruiters who have some idea what to look for and then only include engineers in the last stage. Having every application for a senior dev scanned by other senior d…

at larger companies you often have recruiters focused on specific areas - so they can know more. At places I've worked we've had just an engineering recruiter and just a sales recruiter and etc...

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#184

Post by jtmcmc » Tue, May 15, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

gervase wrote: post #90

alkonaut wrote: post #55

If someone has insight into recruiting, can you explain why contacts sound like sales pitches with vague language? “You’ll work with the core of our digital strategy” “You’ll work close to the systems” “You’ll have a central role” What systems? What is the company even doing ? What about fundamental things like - where is this? - exactly what is the work I’m supposed to be doing here? - What’s the team? 4 beginners?…

Partially, this is based on a disconnect between engineering and hiring. For example, the people who are writing the job descriptions got a 1-line email, "We need to expand the engineering team; could you take care of it? Thanks!", and so they're basically having to come up with all this on their own. Their first stop is probably a Google search: "example job description software engineering" Then, they replace the b…

I feel like this isn't often the case. In multiple teams I've been on - the team wrote their own job descriptions and even revised them multiple times.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#185

Post by jtmcmc » Tue, May 15, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #22

In my opinion: - designing your resume - EQ - having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company - Think of your resume like a poem - visual representation of their experience/resume These are great criteria for hiring a designer or marketing personnel, but these are TERRIBLE criteria for hiring a technical person. In my fantasy world, a technical resume is in a monospaced font and is emi…

I think EQ is incredibly important to engineers or to anyone who is working in a team and "EQ" or put more casually, is this person a self aware, nice person that can work well with other people, is absolutely something I care about in hiring.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#186

Post by jtmcmc » Tue, May 15, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

cuddlypsycho wrote: post #49

"EQ and self awareness" What a crock of sh*t!! This is what happens when you pack HR departments with humanities and gender studies majors. Personally I do not read any resumes, all the hiring I've done was either by referral or through online websites like angelList. This is my process: - Check your linkedIn, look at your experience and education. Catchy schools and companies is good BUT also that you are not a bran…

wow you sound terrible to work with based on this post.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#187

Post by ken » Tue, May 15, 2018, 3:07 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #137

ken wrote: post #78

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, product, technical challenges, or its work environment) is important. This frustrates me so much. What if I can't find a company that offers any such thing? This seems like anti-common sense to me. If you have skills at carpentry, and do a professional job, you can…

>> you're searching for people with passion so you can get them to work unpaid overtime for you I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion. In my experience, the people with the greatest passion also turn out to be the biggest assholes and unnecessarily alienate their coworkers. Going with the carpentr…

> I think companies are also expecting that 'people with passion' will be less impacted by the unavoidable organizational BS and garbage that pops up on occasion.

Perhaps so. (Wanting people to regularly work unpaid overtime could be seen as an instance of "organizational BS".) In this case, it's a good signal to applicants like me that I wouldn't want to work there. Unfortunately, it's become universal across the software industry.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#188

Post by ken » Tue, May 15, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #162

ken wrote: post #78

> It may seem like common sense, but having a deep, enthusiastic, and genuine interest in some aspect of the company (whether it’s the company’s mission, product, technical challenges, or its work environment) is important. This frustrates me so much. What if I can't find a company that offers any such thing? This seems like anti-common sense to me. If you have skills at carpentry, and do a professional job, you can…

It is frustrating. I emphasise passion relatively little in my own interviewing process, but others in the firm can't quite get over the desire to do a "one last check" sort of interview. I don't stop them because, well, the harsh reality is that passion does help. Why? Because programming isn't carpentry. The difference between an average programmer and a great one is that the average one will build what you ask acc…

I notice that you focused in on my carpentry example, and ignored the industrial design one completely. Do you think ID is perfectly hierarchical, and doesn't involve changes to blueprints, and never looks like goofing off?

Your hypothesis only fits 2 of the 3 data points I provided.

Software is the only non-customer-facing job that I know of where passion is considered relevant at hiring time. The mathematicians I've known have all been somewhere between "moderately stoic" and "downright antisocial" and had no trouble getting hired, despite mathematics having all of the features you attribute to programming.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#189

Post by bm1362 » Tue, May 15, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #160

carlmr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say this is true, but only if you're working with terrible technology. If you're working with Elm or some other cool language/technology I'm sure strategy A would fare much better.

I think you radically over-estimate the number of people who want to learn Elm in order to apply for a job. I've done a lot of hiring and we use a "cool" language (Kotlin). We don't mention the language to recruits although it's not a secret (discussed on our website), because we want to hire people with many different platform backgrounds.

We had a problem advertising Clojure, everyone showed up wanting to write Clojure but didn’t care about our product.

As a series A company it was hard to get purist to focus on shipping and we started weeding candidates out that gave off a ‘I just want to work in Clojure’ vibe. Eventually new stuff got written in Java and we migrated off of it due to the hiring pipeline mostly but when we told candidates some honestly dropped out because they were excited to work in Clojure.

Re: What technical recruiters want from engineering candidates

#190

Post by sanderjd » Tue, May 15, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

BigJono wrote: post #141

sanderjd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I used to be this gripe-y person, but the more experience I gained, the more I realized that everything is just the result of its trade-offs and started finding the griping both boring - who wants to complain constantly for years and years? - and less productive than maintaining more of an anthropologist's mindset. So to me, constant griping is more of a not-that-much-experience signal.

This is the most important question I ask in every interview. The goal isn't to get someone to piss and moan about every little thing, it's to see if they can identify any downsides to the tech they use. IME >80% of candidates have never even thought about it, treat every tool/dependency as free, and whatever tech they happen to use was written by the second coming of tech Jesus and contains no faults.

Fair enough. Perhaps I have a blind spot due to always having been the opposite kind of person. But I dunno, I'm not sure I've ever run into one of these "second coming of tech Jesus" types of candidates. Maybe that sort of perspective is more common in the bay area? I definitely sense a bit less ... cautious skepticism when I talk with silicon valley type folks.